Common errors that are caused by outdated drivers

Outdated hardware drivers can cause a lot of errors and even crash your computer. This can be a very serious problem and your computer might even fail to start Windows. Here are a few examples of hardware driver errors and how they manifest.

“My machine crashed after I used it to play games (all range of games, from Call of Duty, Battle of Middle Earth, to Ragnarok Online, which shouldn't take too much resources), usually in about an hour or so into the game (but sometimes as early as 5 minutes into the game). Sometimes the game just shows me an error message and goes back to windows, sometimes the machine goes blank and restarts, and then after the reboot, there is an error message that says, 'your machine has recovered from a serious error'. After I submitted the error to Microsoft, there was the 'error caused by a device driver' reply.”

“Nearly every time I restart my PC it will ask for my user password, say loading user settings, then crash. When I send a error report I get back a message saying 'Error caused by a device driver. Thank you for sending an error report to Microsoft.'"

If you are using a Windows XP-based computer and the computer tries to enter a sleep mode, you may receive the following error message:

The device driver for the keyboard device is preventing the machine from entering sleep mode. Please close all applications and try again. If the problem persists, you may need to update this driver.

where keyboard device is typically either "Standard 101/102-Key or Microsoft Natural PS/2 Keyboard" or "Terminal Server Keyboard Driver" and sleep mode is either Standby, Idle, or Hibernate.”

“My computer is like brand new, I installed the proper audio drivers but the device simply won’t start (code 10)”

As you can see, driver related errors are quite serious and action should be taken immediately! In general, driver problems occur because of:

Conflicts as a result of missing or busy resource

Instability caused because of bugs in the driver or the operating system component causing frequent buffer errors in the system

Poorly designed driver with low frame rates that reduce your system stability and performance

Incompatibility with operating system

Corrupt or incorrect registry entries

Below you can find some of the most frequent driver errors, generated by outdated or faulty driver files:

To fix these problems, you must upgrade to a new driver version. Sometimes you need to reinstall the driver to get rid of corrupted files. You can also use the recovery console to replace the corrupt driver file with the original file. Our advice is to upgrade your driver and fix the errors as soon as you can!

Other related tutorials:

Check out some of these related tutorials and articles to learn more about updating your computer's drivers.